When The Easton Argus published its weekly edition on July 16, 1863, the people of Northampton County got what they yearned for and perhaps dreaded — news of the 153rd Pennsylvania Infantry's fight at Gettysburg.

Unlike previous editions when news of the 153rd took up just snippets of columns, nearly a third of the main news page was devoted to the county's regiment, and it included the first casualty list from the three-day battle that halted the invasion of the North by the Confederates under Gen. Robert E. Lee.

It's easy to imagine the people of the county gathering to read the list, and the grief — or relief — caused by it.

The first name is Horace Buss of Company A, which formed in Nazareth. He died on July 1, the first day of the fighting. At the end of the list, Company K reports no one was killed, but among its wounded was "Lorenzo Weaver, left leg off."

The list has 19 names of those killed in action, but the Argus tells readers it simply does not yet know the magnitude of the losses because the 153rd was gone by the time the newspaper's correspondents arrived at the battlefield.

"The Regiment had left Gettysburg and no rolls were to be obtained there of the living, and the men who were killed in the first days fight, had to be abandoned on the field and were buried by the rebels, so that it is not known who they were," the Argus reported.

Sadly, the number of dead would rise in the weeks to come — historians of the regiment put the loss at 53, which means one out of every 10 men who entered the battle died. The Argus casualty list put the number of wounded at about 150, and the newspaper noted the regiment suffered 80 prisoners — staggering losses for the regiment.

And though the Argus correspondents could not accurately determine the fate of the 153rd during their trip to Gettysburg, they captured the destruction of the battle that raged July 1-3, 1863.

In the town of Gettysburg, "posts, porches, and shutters of the buildings are riddled with bullets."

On the battlefield, hundreds of dead horses lay everywhere, "filling the air with the most offensive smells." The landscape was also littered with discarded rifles, cartridge boxes, bayonets and blankets. And everywhere was evidence of the nearly 6,700 men who died in the costliest battle of the Civil War.

"All over the field there are newly made graves," the Argus reported. "There are long rows of them, parallel to each other, where the Federal soldiers lie. Where the carnage was great, a trench received the remains of all, they were thrown in indiscriminately, without burial service or coffin."

The survivors of the 153rd would briefly join in pursuit of Lee's forces as they retreated back to Virginia. But for the men of Northampton County, the war was over.

By the end of the month, their nine-month enlistments would expire and they would head back to Easton and a heroes' welcome. But of the nearly 1,000 men who left town with the 153rd in September 1862, only about half would return.